Angels of Destruction

by Keith Donohue

  “Wake up, Miss Nancy.” Una stood by the headboard, a full glass in her hand as an offertory. Erica sipped once, then fell back on the pillow and closed her eyes, sighing at the mattress's tender embrace. “You have to get up, Miss Nancy. The morning is well spent, and Mr. Wiley left without you. C'mon, we'll fix you a queen's breakfast. It's past tin.”

  Tin, ten, Tinnissee, her memory came back to her, worthless and ragged. “I'm sick,” she said. “The world has fallen on top of me.”

  “Try.” Her thin arms strung with exertion, Una lifted her to a sitting position.

  The bed pitched wildly on a storm-spun ocean, and Erica fought to right her balance and steady the whirling room. The child clung to her, and after a few deep breaths, Erica could focus and tempt her body to pull back the blankets, lift her knees, and swing her hips. When her feet hit the bare floor, she stopped to rest. “What do you mean?” she asked. “He left without me?”

  “Gone to get your car, he says. Told me to tell you he'd be back as soon as he could get her started.” She giggled at the word “her.”

  Erica rocked to steady herself and try to stand. “I don't think I can make it down that ladder. Too wobbly. I don't know what's wrong with me.”

  “You need some food in you, is all. Come along, and I'll watch over you.”

  Caution guided every step till they reached the safety and comfort of the kitchen. At the stove, Mee-Maw concentrated on the frying eggs and did not notice her company until the chairs scraped across the floor, but when she saw how poorly the girl appeared, she set down her spatula and raced to her side. With a cool hand, Mrs. Gavin felt the temperature of Erica's brow, tutted to herself, and fetched a glass of orange juice. “Drink. You're coming down with something.”

  “I feel bored-out, empty. One side of my face is so tender it hurts.”

  “A flu or pneumonia, considering how long you was out in that cold rain.”

  They fed her dry toast and then cosseted her in front of the fireplace, a warm blanket on her lap, a glass of tepid ginger ale on the table-side. Una was charged with making a fire and hurried through her tasks of finding matches and kindling, stoking the flames with her breath, anxious to be not too far removed from Erica's side. Mrs. Gavin hummed at her chores, washing up another skillet and pouring cold coffee down the drain, and every quarter hour, checking in on the mummified girl, punching up a throw pillow for her neck, and straightening the already straight blankets. On her threadbare throne, Erica could not fall asleep, but found herself instead restful and contemplative, watching the dancing fire and thinking of the friends she had left behind in high school—what would Joyce Green think of me now?—and the buzz in her hometown once they realized that she had gone and done it, had the nerve after all, and good for her, she got out and is following her heart. Like a hospital nurse, Mrs. Gavin came and stuck a thermometer under Erica's tongue, and the little girl squatted on a hassock in front of her, staring intently at the glass stick.

  “You ever seen,” Una asked, “a cartoon where the sun is shining so hot and the red line on the thermometer goes higher and higher the hotter and hotter it gets till splat! Right through the top? I used to think blood was inside. Mee-Maw likes to say when she is mad it makes her blood boil. But I ain't never seen that red line move in a real thermometer. Fact, you can't hardly see that line at all lest you look just so. Like a lot of things in this world, you might miss seeing what's there at all, lest you are looking the right way.”

  Squinting to catch the light in the angled glass, Mee-Maw announced, “A tick over 101 degrees. We should get you back to bed.” From outside, the sound of a distant shot echoed through the mountains, stilling the conversation for a moment. Mrs. Gavin paused, considering the possibilities.

  Erica pulled the blanket to her shoulders. “No, I want to wait for Wiley.”

  “I'll leave you entertain our company,” Mrs. Gavin said to her granddaughter and wandered back into the depths of the cabin. The girls played cards to help pass the time. Una taught her rummy and gin, taking most of the tricks as her opponent struggled to recall the rules and strategy of the games. As daylight began to fail, Erica grew tired and waved away the deck, and Una boxed the cards and sat quietly. Sleep overshadowed her patient like a cloud. Keeping vigil, Una chose a book to read quietly, the delicate turning of the pages a comforting sound. Awakened by the gasping interruption of her own breath, Erica drew in the sudden darkness of the room. The only illumination came from a short lamp casting a halo, under which Una sat. When the blankets rustled, she rose to Erica's side.

  “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “An hour or so. You called him Wiley before. Mr. Wiley. I thought his name was Ricky, but before you fell asleep you said you had to wait on Wiley. Why wouldn't you call him by his Christian name?”

  “Did I? Must be the fever. How long has he been gone? Ricky, I mean.”

  “All day.” Una knelt in front of her patient's chair and rested her hands on Erica's knees. “You think he's ever coming back for you?”

  An ache spread and flooded her joints and muscles. The stiffness pinched her shoulders when she shrugged. “I don't know,” she said, surprising herself.

  17

  The car had melted in the rain. Wiley hiked back through the woods to locate the place where they pushed the Duster off the road, though he could not be certain in the bright new day if he was following the right path. He found the lake by following the sounds of birds in flight, and he found the clearing and the path to the road. But no car. Impressions from tire tracks in the waterlogged ground provided evidence that it had been there, but he could not figure out how or why the dead car had moved. And without the landmark of the car, he could not remember where they had buried the guns. Perhaps someone else had found the Duster, he thought, managed to start it, and driven off, or perhaps a tow truck, called by the police, had pulled into the space and dragged it away. Or perhaps his bearings were all wrong. He walked a half mile along the highway, then retraced his steps and investigated the side of the road in the other direction. Certain that he remembered the clearing, Wiley returned to the trail and stood at its apex, overlooking the lake, willing the car to return. He strode to the shoreline and looked for signs writ on water—perhaps it had become unmoored and floated away and now rested submerged in the bottom silt. Nothing but mallards feeding on duckweed, and caught in the tall grass, the tattered flag of a ten-dollar bill fluttering, drying in the sun-blistered air. Farther along the shoreline, the waters lapped against the abandoned canvas bag floating like a sail from a drowned boat. He sat on the slant of a downed tree and stared at the sunlight dancing on the water.

  The stillness of the afternoon reminded him of the last time his father took the boys hunting. They tramped up to Potter County and the canyons carved into the mountains, bivouacking in the cabin of a friend of a friend from the mill. Denny must have been twelve, and Wiley, at eight, labored under the heft of the rifle. A killing frost had long since come and gone, and the November dawn arrived steel gray and loaded with moisture. The threesome waited in a blind fifteen feet in the air, and the gun in his father's hands, the same rifle now missing, looked like a cannon. Wiley prayed that no deer would pass through the parameter of their sights, and just as he settled into the belief that his wish would be granted, a gunshot cracked the silence. The buck, shocked by the impact at its shoulder, coughed blood and bumbled into the brush. His father climbed down first, Denny following closely behind, and by the time Wiley had negotiated the makeshift rungs, they had caught up to the deer. His father grabbed the antlers and hoisted the head for his sons to see the raging eyes, the heaving flanks, and the tenacious instinct to fight surrender. And life stole away without gesture. Wiley's stomach rebelled and he threw up behind a chokecherry tree. A sharp knife greeted him on return, as his father prepared to field dress the animal. Lifting the point skyward, he turned to the boy. “Son, all things must pass and give way to the next, whether by your hand or God's. If
you're going to go hunting, you got to be ready that something will die, and if you are scared of death, you've no place being here.” Wiley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and knelt next to his father.

  A drake called across the water, and he remembered where he was. Erica would panic when she heard about the missing car, and he dreaded the scene—that perplexed squint threatening tears, the rush to accusation and despair: How could you let this happen? What will we do now? That crazy old lady must have a vehicle stashed somewhere on the property in order to get off the mountain for food, clothes, and other necessities. He could probably score the keys while Moo-maw and that imp slept and be down the road hours before the cock crowed next morning. Or they could hitch to Memphis and take their pick of cars. Or he could leave now, by himself, were it not for the money and his bag back in the cabin. Erica was just not as resilient and resourceful as he had expected; in fact, she was too stiff about the whole thing. Not a real rebel, not a true revolutionary, certainly no Patty Hearst. Hell, that high school chick—sexy girl in the round glasses—from whom they stole the car was probably more radical, and why had Erica given him such grief over his invitation to her to join them? What did Erica expect, really, that she would be his one and only? Did she think that her life would be remotely like the one they had left behind? The revolution's coming, baby, and we need to give our love away. “I am too young to die,” he said aloud, and the ducks on the lake replied with strings of nervous chatter.

  Taking the pistol from his jacket pocket, he stood and sighted down the barrel at the nearest mallard and squeezed the trigger. The retort masked the splash of the round on the water's surface and the ensuing frenzy of the birds. “Next time!” he shouted into the air. Reorienting himself, Wiley headed back to the road in search of the buried guns. Eyes to the ground, he tried to remember their hiding place, wandering like a man who has lost his glasses only to find them atop his head, and when he stumbled at last upon the package under the pile of leaves, some measure of hope was restored. Unwrapping the sodden stadium blanket, he was dismayed at the wet arsenal, which he would have to break down to clean and dry, but the weapons, at least, could be salvaged. Guns cradled in his arms, he began the long march back to the cabin, mulling every step of the way what he might say to Erica.

  18

  A week after their daughter left, Paul awoke at his usual early hour, showered and dressed, and announced at the breakfast table that he was going back to work. “Just for a few hours,” he told her. “I've got patients.” Staying at home with Margaret for those seven days proved more than he could manage, both of them anxious for police reports that never came. He left the house only to prowl his daughter's haunts and interview her dead-end friends, all the time obsessing over the unanswerable why. The high school students proved unhelpful—blank looks, shrugged shoulders, no confessions forthcoming. Beneath their stonewalling, he felt certain that they knew the truth but chose to protect and romanticize the pair, for even the most cynical longed for Erica and Wiley to get away with it.

  Unsure of how to comfort his wife, how to read in her resolved stoicism hints of hope or despair, Paul kept to their tacit understanding. They had unraveled all possible plots and decided that they simply did not know, would wait, and wait they did. She ate little, slept less. Sometimes she would catch him watching her, certain that her lips had been moving in the running conversation she had with herself. And he knew she could not bear his internal pacing. He felt her madness creeping into his soul and rejected it, leaving her to tend the phone, isolated as a lighthouse keeper.

  Margaret did not argue with his decision to return to the clinic, but let him go without a syllable of protest, relieved when he finally shut the front door behind him. His worries had grown by accretion till he was made gravid by his thoughts. Long after she was alone in the house, she went to the window to check for his car in the drive, and a scree of leaves danced like ghosts in the empty space. Those first few days had been a horror to bear, the godforsaken vacancy in their house, in their lives, the slow realization of how utterly missing she was. The detective, who came by their place the morning after the encounter at the Rinnicks’, had said that most missing children return within hours, at worst a day, but if Erica hadn't returned—and she had already been missing three days by Margaret's reckoning—the percentages diminished. Being realistic, he had said, pretending reality offered any solace. Each day, as soon as the hour was decent, she telephoned the police station, then again in the afternoon, and then again in the evening until everyone remotely connected with the case simply avoided her altogether or took a message, until finally telling her to simply wait, and wait she did, her sorrow mingled with self-recrimination and regrets. Mrs. Delarosa sat with her for two hours the first day, one hour the second, and zero by week's end. Word had spread through the town, and neighbors came calling, to help they said, but Margaret sensed the morbid curiosity of each good Samaritan who drew close merely to measure how she would feel if in Margaret's situation. Or, worse still, the unspoken accusation: what kind of mother would let her only child run away? She resolved not to allow such judgment any purchase. She never cried once when another soul was around, and she was blessedly alone until Diane arrived to keep vigil with her.

  When Margaret opened the door, the two sisters collapsed into each other's entwining arms. As usual Diane swept in, done up in the latest fashion—a high-waisted red tunic dress with contrasting black and white Bakelite bangles on her wrists. But as soon as she was with Margaret, they were young girls again, confederates against their long-gone parents and the history of their husbands, chained by DNA and five thousand nights and days together. No one else could understand the degree of loss, and their presumption of empathy allowed them to move at once to frankness.

  “You look like hell,” Diane said. “I'm so, so sorry.”

  They hugged each other again and then broke off, holding hands as they crossed into the kitchen. Margaret unwound the story, unpacked the scarce details about Wiley and the Rinnicks, and uncovered a shocking paucity of any real clues. A sort of progress was achieved in the telling—for Margaret, the unburdening of her confusion and loneliness, and for Diane, the opportunity to feel useful again to her older sister. At three in the afternoon, they began to sketch out their plans for that night's meal, for how long she might stay. And after dinner and drinks, after Paul finally begged off to bed, they sat in the living room sipping white wine, the television on but soundless, and took up the matter again.

  “Do you worry that she's never coming back?”

  “I am trying not to think about her at the moment.”

  “Some distraction is called for then. Let's play a game.”

  “I don't want to play a game. The police haven't called today. Why don't they call?”

  “Not cards. You always cheat at solitaire, and you're only cheating yourself, you know. How about the crossword? I'll get the newspaper.”

  “That awful Rinnick woman. She drove Wiley to it. Bad blood always begins in the womb.”

  “Don't say that, Maggie. You can't blame yourself for Erica's hormones.” She finished her wine and set the glass down on top of a magazine. “Love makes us do wicked things.”

  “What does she know about love? She's still just a girl.”

  “Now you sound just like Mom again. Those kids may not know a lot about life—the daily tricks to just get through the boredom and disappointment—but don't say the young don't know about love. It's the only thing they do know. From that first blast of air into a baby's lungs, they come into the world hungry for it, clamoring for affection.”

  “Don't be ridiculous. A baby cries because she's hungry for mother's milk. Needs a diaper change. Or is startled, maybe cold.”

  “No. Right from the beginning, we're wrenched from the one true love. The womb where that baby has spent every moment for nine months, listening to the music of the mother's heartbeat. And then the baby is pushed out in a fit of crying, on its own now,
always looking for the missing piece. Where is my mother? Cold? Hungry? Crying for love, from the first day that's all we know. She's in love. Amour fou. She went willingly with him.”

  “That's just lust, just raging hormones.”

  “You ought to know enough not to confuse sex with love. One's the happy accident of the other. What about that boyfriend of yours down in Washington? I know you saw him, Maggie—”

  “Jackson,” Margaret whispered. “I'll call Jackson. He'll know what to do.” She reached for the telephone, watched her sister tiptoe away the moment she began to dial.

  19

  The setting sun lit the underside of the clouds, reflecting glory on the bowl of the sky, suffused with gold, magenta, and pewter, even white renewed in its brilliance. From the top of a hill, Una watched the colors bend to evening as she waited for the approaching figure to negotiate the path through the woods. From afar, he looked like some Hindu deity, extra arms protruding from his sides, but the closer he came, the more clearly his appendages were revealed: in the cradle of his left arm, a shotgun broken down at the nexus of stock and barrel, and in his right, a rifle carried upright like a soldier's. Una studied the sky, then the man, calculating the time and distance, hoping he would come upon her while light remained for him to notice her and not react in fear or surprise. Beyond in the vale, the cabin lights blinked on window by window.

  Wiley had planned to hide the guns on the property near the cabin and wake up early the following morning to clean and dry them properly in a private place. The girl had doubtless seen the pistol hidden in his jacket, but there was no need to alarm her or the old woman any further with a display of more firepower, no reason to spook them, for he had reckoned on their trust and help in getting out of these hills. Though he had not discovered where she hid it, they would need to borrow or steal the old lady's car. Or, if Erica objected to the idea, ask the old lady to drive them into town or out to the highway at least, where they could hitch a ride to Memphis and find another set of wheels. But when he saw Una come flying off the hilltop, earnest arms pumping and feet smacking the ground, he scrambled for some explanation. Breathless, she stopped short to wait, rested her hands on her knees, and lifted her mad red face to meet his gaze. “Mr. Wiley,” she panted. “Thought you'd never come, but you best be quick. She's been asking after you. She's real sick.”